Good Time Chinese Restaurant
A restaurant in Lawndale that has a "dimensional wormhole" in back, according to Cupid in the controversial third-season Daria episode, "Depth Takes a Holiday." Easily the most notorious establishment in town, at least in the view of Daria fandom, Good Time has been used in numerous fanfics to create crossover stories or allow exploration of parallel Dariaverses, almost as often as it is used to reconnect Lawndale with Holiday Island.
Stories making use of the cross-universal nature of the wormhole date back to at least 1999 and include those by the following authors (in alphabetical order). Not all of these stories involve links with Holiday Island or the Holiday Island High characters; those that do have (HIH) after them.
- Angelinhel: "A Day (Un)Like Any Other" here on PPMB (HIH)
- Dervish: "Call of Quinnthulhu" (crossover with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos)
- Firah: "See You in the Funny Papers," here on Outpost Daria (via Wayback Machine)
- Richard Lobinske: "Holiday Kombat" (crossover with Mortal Kombat), "Three"
- Lycissa: "Second Chances" and its sequel, "End of the Line"
- Medea42: "The Slacker Within"
- Mystik Slacker: "A Warrior Maid of Lawndale" (crossover with Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom novels)
- Nemo Blank: "Crossover" (HIH) and "Restrain Jane Lane! or, Stupid Cupid" (HIH)
- RedPanther: "Essay of Exile II: Return to Lawndale" here and here on Outpost Daria, retrieved by the Wayback Machine (HIH)
- LSauchelli: "Dial M for Magic" on PPMB (HIH)
- Scissors MacGillicutty: "Where's Mary Sue When You Need Her?"
- SoulfulZen: "A Curse of Bad Timing" here on Outpost Daria, retrieved by the Wayback Machine (HIH)
- TAG: "Death Takes a Holliday," "Guys' Night Out," "A Hard Days' Night" (HIH), "Illusions," "Luuuv Story" (HIH), "Scarlett"
- thatLONERchick : "Jane, Where's My Car?", "Interdimensional Dust Up on Twelfth of May", "Will Ye Go Lassie, Go?" (HIH), "Familiar Strangers"
The rationale for the wormhole's existence varies from tale to tale. "Illusions" established the idea that the wormhole is produced by an ancient alien artifact embedded in the rear wall of the restaurant, an idea used also in "Guys' Night Out," "Second Chances," "Three", and "End of the Line." The aliens who created the device are called the Architects.
So far as is known, the only fanfic author in recent times to regularly not use Good Time as an interdimensional way station is Richard Lobinske. In addition to the two offbeat stories named above, he postulated in the Last Summer story, "Comforting a Confused Soul," that Daria made up all the events of "Depth Takes a Holiday" as part of a fantasy story she wrote, which she shows to Jane while they dine at Good Time. The same author applies the Gardner Principle to that in "Three" to explain a portal behind one universe's Good Time. A mundane Good Time resurfaces in "Lindy and the Knight" and "The Last Piece Falls" in his Falling Into College series. Kara Wild proposed that Daria's experiences on Holiday Island were caused by food poisoning in "A Desperately Needed Ending (to "Depth Takes a Holiday")," but Good Time and its wormhole do not appear therein.
Brother Grimace, in the Legion of Lawndale Heroes series, has the restaurant simply mentioned as "a good place for Chinese food."